Description

North Carolina's Black Mountain Range probably holds the best alpine snow and ice routes in the Southeast. These routes are huge with 3K+ elevation change, 1 to 4 hour approaches (and descents), humbling bushwhacking, and hundreds to a thousand plus plus feet of everything from steep snow to technical ice. The remote and committing nature of these routes require a pre dawn start, map, compass, and/or GPS, and the knowledge to use them (i.e., waypoint your vehicle).

An accident up there would require a helicopter short haul and more than one party had to call the Yancy County Sheriff's Department for assistance...

Please give these routes and the range the respect they deserve.

Getting There

Trailheads and bushwhacking starting points are located off of roads accessed via highway 80 South of Micaville. See routes for specific approaches.

Left Wishbone is for sure the most skiable, at least from the base of the obvious upper rock slab that I've never seen deep enough to be worth doing. Crescent sucks for skiing. Here is a pic of Crescent with skis:

For all these routes, the best options are two technical ice tools like BD Viper, Petzl Quark/Nomic, Camp Cassin X-all mountain. Most of this stuff is low angle thin ice with only occasional small steps of vertical ice, so you don't really need the most aggressively curved tools meant more for hard ice and mixed routes. People have also climbed these routes with two straight shaft mountaineering axes with wrist leashes, but that's also not the best option. Of course, you'll also need crampons with front points and appropriate boots to accommodate them. You'll need to be prepared to solo long exposed sections of low angle ice. Most people tackling these routes feel comfortable soloing WI2 grade and only rope up for the short steeper sections of WI3 or above. I hope that helps!
Aug 28, 2017